MASSIVE PARALLELISM ON THE HYBRID TEXT-RETRIEVAL MACHINE

The design of a high-performance, cost-effective, machine for retrievi ng textual data is discussed in this paper. High performance and cost effectiveness are achieved by a combination of low-cost hard disks, so ftware filtering techniques, and a large amount of main memory. The di scussion focuses on the signature processor, which is based on the par titioned signature file technique, and the mass storage system, which is based on a disk array. A performance evaluation on the individual s ystem components, namely, the signature processor and the mass storage system, as well as the entire system is presented.